A snowy parking spot beneath the Frank Slide in Alberta.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
The freshly detailed Cadillac Optiq test car didn’t stay clean for long on my recent drive from Calgary to Vancouver. I took the longer route over the Crowsnest Pass before hugging the U.S. border along Highway 3, and late-season snow mucked in within a half-hour of leaving the city.
The Crowsnest Highway is a challenging route for any vehicle, let alone a car that’s fully electric. The part I drove is 900 kilometres of asphalt rises (and drops) more than 12,000 metres through the mountains, far more than the height of Mount Everest.
I planned ahead for the drive, as most EV owners do when they’re not returning to their home chargers. My friend Neil, who owns a pair of electric cars and who drove with me to northern Ontario last year in a Hyundai Ioniq 9, came along for the ride and I leaned on his EV knowledge. The rear-wheel-drive Optiq has a claimed range of 510 kilometres on a warm day, though our Premium Luxury tester was equipped with a second motor for all-wheel drive, a $4,500 option that lowered its claimed range to 488 kilometres.
The road from Calgary down to the Crowsnest Highway, as the first snow set in.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
The centre console features a flying armrest that adds an airiness to the interior.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
In fact, thanks to the colder weather and the constant climbs, the Optiq’s practical driving range for much of the Crowsnest was just more than 300 kilometres. Driving downhill did not help the car to gain back all its energy losses from driving uphill – it regained perhaps 20 per cent of what it lost.
Of course, 300 kilometres is a generous distance, but we did not stay at any hotels that offered overnight charging – they didn’t exist where we needed them to be. This meant we wanted to recharge beside the road at faster Level 3 charging stations, an hour or less at a time. We were happy the Optiq is fitted with a NACS charging port so it can use most Tesla superchargers; they were the quickest and most convenient of all the chargers we used.
At a Tesla Supercharger in Fernie, B.C.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
The 1913 Greenwood Road Tunnel was replaced in 1964 and filled in with earth, but then unearthed in 1990 when its replacement tunnel was decommissioned and destroyed.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
The Optiq is Cadillac’s smallest and least costly electric vehicle, built in Mexico, and it shares its platform and much of its technology with the Chevrolet Equinox EV. It looks similar on the outside, but feels different inside the cabin. The centre console features a flying armrest that adds an airiness to the interior, and includes a rotary controller as an additional way to use the touchscreen. That screen, slimmer than on the Equinox, is better integrated with the gauge cluster and left-side digital control screen to create a seamless 33-inch LED display. The tester’s interior was fitted in Phantom Blue, an attractive colour option that costs an additional $1,375 over the standard black.
One of the Optiq’s best driving features is a paddle on the left side of the steering wheel that you pull to activate regenerative braking – not to set the level, like most EV paddles, but actually apply the regeneration to the motor. On a winding road, it’s the equivalent of gearing down for a corner and it’s a feature that should be included on all performance EVs.
Shelly Jensen taking a look at the Cadillac’s charge port outside Mama’s Grill, where she is the owner, in Greenwood, B.C.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
At a 100-kilowatt Flo charger in Greenwood, B.C.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
“I’d like an electric car like this, but I don’t think I’m ready yet,” said Shelly Jensen, who served us breakfast in Greenwood, B.C., and who came outside to look at the Cadillac. She and her husband split their time between Greenwood, where she owns Mama’s Grill, and North Vancouver, where she works as a celebrity hairstylist. Every couple of weeks or so, she drives 500 kilometres between homes in her diesel-powered GMC Canyon pickup truck, and that’s just too far to make it without recharging along the way.
“I’d be concerned about not being able to charge up,” she said. “There are charging stations, but you can’t really depend on them. What if somebody’s ahead of you and you’re on a time schedule? Or if something’s broken at the charger? I like all the little bells and whistles that go with an electric [vehicle], but I need consistency and reliability for charging it, too.”
We were plugged into a 100-kilowatt Flo charger in Greenwood, where we paid 39 cents a kilowatt-hour to top up the battery to get us to the next charge in Princeton. At that rate, the 200-kilometre run to our hotel cost $19 in electricity. There were other stations en route, but the most efficient way to charge an EV is from a 30-per-cent charge to an 80-per-cent charge – that’s when the energy is most swiftly transferred from the charger to the battery.
For a driver like Shelly, that would add at least an hour of charging to her five-hour journey (assuming she could pull straight up to a fast charger, without another vehicle already there). But for most EV drivers, who rarely cover such distances in a single day, it would not be an issue. If you know you can reach the cheap electricity of your home charger before the end of the day, you don’t even think about your vehicle’s remaining range.
Treacherous highway conditions on the road from Princeton to Hope, B.C.Neil Horner/Supplied
It was at Princeton, that we first saw the weather warnings for the next day, and we woke to snow on the car and a forecast for at least 10 more centimetres to fall on the high stretches of Highway 3, through E.C. Manning Provincial Park. We were glad we’d charged the Optiq to 100 per cent during dinner – it would be 280 kilometres on the slow and slippery road, and we didn’t need the extra concern of running out of energy.
The all-wheel drive of the Cadillac, as well as the competence of the Michelin X-Ice winter tires, helped save the day, taking us up and over the last of the mountains and down to the soggy lower mainland. We arrived with 19 per cent of our battery power left, good for another 73 kilometres, and felt like we could turn around and drive straight back to Calgary.
Along the way, the Optiq averaged a consumption of 27 kilowatt-hours every 100 kilometres. That’s up from the 21.1 kilowatt-hours that Cadillac claims, but none too shabby when you consider how much we climbed. Remarkable really – a journey that, for all of its physical challenges, turned out to be just another drive through the beauty of B.C.’s parks.
Recharging in Blairmore, Alta.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
Tech specs
- Base price/as tested: $60,499/$70,972, including freight, pre-delivery inspection and fees, plus tax
- Motor/battery: Single or dual motor/85 kilowatt-hour
- Horsepower/torque (lb-ft): RWD:315/332; AWD: 440/498
- Drive: Rear-wheel drive and all-wheel drive
- Power consumption (Natural Resources Canada ratings)/charging capacity: 21.1 kilowatt-hours/100 kilometres (claimed)/150 kilowatts
- Curb weight: 2,355 kilograms
- Range (claimed and observed): RWD: 510 kilometres; AWD: 488 kilometres
- Alternatives: Genesis GV60, Volvo EX40, Porsche Macan EV, Audi SQ6 e-tron, Polestar 3, Lexus RZ, Tesla Model Y
The trunk on the Optiq has about 740 litres.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
The writer was a guest of the automaker. Content was not subject to approval.
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